Top-level sackings at education ministry as Georgia unveils reforms

Six senior figures at Georgia’s Ministry of Education were dismissed on Monday just 10 days before the start of the new term. On Friday, Minister Mikheil Bati­ashvili was joined by Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze to unveil the government’s education shake-up.

Temur Murghulia and Lia Gigauri, the deputy ministers for youth and voca­tion­al education, were among those fired, with their positions being com­plete­ly abolished.

Bati­ashvili also fired Maia Mimi­noshvili, the long-time director of the National Assess­ment and Exam­i­na­tions Centre, and Tamar Sanikidze, head of the National Centre for Edu­ca­tion­al Quality Enhance­ment, who also served as Education Minister in 2013–2016.

The heads of the National Science Foun­da­tion and National Centre for Teachers’ Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment were also sacked. With the firings, the Minister announced the start of new reforms and promised more ‘changes in personnel’ to come.

‘Tripled salaries’

Bati­ashvili stated that the gov­ern­ment intended to ‘revisit’ the system of common national uni­ver­si­ty entrance exams with Georgia’s ‘inter­na­tion­al partners’, and to introduce ‘a new model’ by 2020.

The Minister, who was appointed in July’s cabinet reshuffle, said the reforms would focus on ‘five direc­tions’: pre-shcool, general, higher, and voca­tion­al education, as well as ‘science and inno­va­tion’. The announced reforms also included plans to create ‘inde­pen­dent and inter­na­tion­al agencies of accred­i­ta­tion’.

PM Bakhtadze announced that in Autumn, his gov­ern­ment would introduce a draft law to secure financing for education of ‘at least 10%–11% of GDP’. He and the minister also vowed to ‘triple the salaries’ of 10,000 teachers in 2018–2019, and to raise the average salary of school teachers to ₾1,500 ($570) and of higher education teachers to ₾2,000 ($770) ‘and more’ by 2022.

‘On day one of my appoint­ment I made a statement about the problems in the system, be it the approval process [for textbooks], technical and other vio­la­tions in schools, and other problems’, Bati­ashvili said while announc­ing the dis­missals.

He under­lined problems he said existed in the ministry’s textbooks approval system, and com­plained that the ministry was behind schedule in their plans, blaming a lack of coor­di­na­tion between different education agencies. While formally thanking the former officials for their work, Bati­ashvili also said that they would await the results of an audit which would reveal any ‘vio­la­tions’.

Some of the former officials have recently been struck by scandal for alleged mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion. Last summer, the Exam­i­na­tions Centre failed to provide air con­di­tion­ing during national exams, despite the usual summer heat. Among those dismissed, Mimi­noshvili served the longest in her position, super­vis­ing the reformed national entry exams since 2002 almost without inter­rup­tion.

In July, Diogene Pub­lish­ing Ltd accused the ministry of violating con­fi­den­tial­i­ty terms during the contest for approval of school textbooks; the scandal involved Deputy Minister Lali Gigauri's sister Lali.

The dis­missals came on the back­ground of protests by the Tbilisi-based Black Sea Uni­ver­si­ty and its students after the Education Ministry revoked the university’s accred­i­ta­tion in August — effec­tive­ly banning it from taking on new students for one year.

It was the latest in a series of con­tro­ver­sial autho­ri­sa­tion can­cel­la­tions by the agency headed by the dismissed Tamar Sanikidze. Other cases included revoking the teaching rights of a Turkish Demirel Collage in Tbilisi and shutting down the Şahin Friend­ship School in Batumi last year.

All three have been linked to Turkish oppo­si­tion figure Fethullah Gülen. Turkey has made efforts to shut down a number of schools asso­ci­at­ed with Gülen globally.

Bati­ashvili is a former Rector of the Tbilisi-based Academy of Business and Tech­nolo­gies and the founder of Silicon Valley Tbilisi’s tech­no­log­i­cal centre, and is a newcomer in Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze's 'small gov­ern­ment' cabinet. After several min­istries were abolished during the latest reshuffle, Bati­ashvili took over addi­tion­al gov­ern­ment functions, making him the first Minister of Education, Science, Culture, and Sport of Georgia.

‘Not a team’

Giorgi Chanturia, Head of the Georgian Coalition Education for All, told OC Media that they expected the changes and hoped that the dis­missals might be a sign that reforms would now move faster. ‘The problem was not in long-term occu­pa­tion in high positions but rather a failure to undertake reforms all along’, Chanturia told OC Media. He declined to address alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the ministry without more evidence but said there was a lack of ‘trans­paren­cy’ and ‘inclu­siv­i­ty’ in the textbook approval process.

According to education expert Simon Janashia, given society’s dis­con­tent with the ministry’s work ‘on all levels of the education system’, the decision to fire senior officials may be the government’s attempt to show they are ‘respon­sive’ to the general sentiment.

‘More coor­di­na­tion would be better’, Janashia told OC Media, recalling dis­agree­ments between the Teachers’ Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment Center and the Education Quality Enhance­ment Centre, or among those working on curricula at the ministry and National Assess­ment and Exam­i­na­tions Centre, causing ‘parallel’ systems.

Janashia also referred to the stripping of autho­ri­sa­tions by the Education Quality Enhance­ment Center under Sanikidze. However, he doubted the ruling Georgian Dream Party were unhappy with Director Sanikidze for this, as ‘it looked like she was following the Party’s instruc­tions’.

‘Probably, the Minister thought it would be difficult to implement reforms he had planned with several strong leaders charing centres like stand­alone prin­ci­pal­i­ties’, Sandro Asatiani, the Head of inno­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy center GeoLab and an invited expert at Education Ministry, told OC Media. ‘It was not a team’, he added.

In a recent policy document, Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al — Georgia claimed that a gradual rise in funding in Georgia’s education system had not improved the quality of education over recent years. The group urged the gov­ern­ment to ‘outline specific objec­tives and outcomes’ for general education, which they said should be mea­sur­able.

Girchi’s ‘Alternative education system’

Non-par­lia­men­tary oppo­si­tion party Girchi was quick to condemn the government’s proposals, sug­gest­ing their own ‘alter­na­tive cur­ricu­lum’.

‘Today we have heard a lot of standard blah-blah-blah about how they plan to reform the education system […]. We spend literally billions in the education system and these billions are spent on ruining our children’s lives’, Girchi’s leader, Zura Japaridze, said at a press con­fer­ence imme­di­ate­ly after the government’s pre­sen­ta­tion.

Japaridze called the current state of the education system as ‘harmful’ and announced his party’s ‘free education’ ini­tia­tive, which he said would employ ‘young teachers’ and ‘not obey any gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion’.

Japaridze said Georgian school teachers had failed to succeed in other careers and were in general ‘unsuc­cess­ful in their lives’, and hence were ‘unable to prepare children for future life’. Girchi’s leader promised to outline more details about his party’s ini­tia­tive, which he called ‘the biggest project in Girchi’s history’, on 16 October.